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Impacts of the new
Putin presidency on
U.S.-Russia relations?

U.S. ties with Russia have been strained since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began his re-election campaign for president. This has made it more difficult for Washington and Moscow to make progress on policy toward Syria and Iran, and we are in many fields now experiencing that the relatively warm contact between President Obama and President Medvedev is in the process of being replaced by a colder tone. Putin apparently prefers the role of counterweight more than being a world stage partner together with U.S.A.

This month marks three years since the U.S.- Russia “reset” was introduced. In March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. They agreed that it was time to turn the page in relations between the two countries and start a constructive dialogue with a clean slate.

President Barack Obama has made better relations with Russia a cornerstone of his foreign policy . The so-called “reset” in relations with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev brought about a major arms-control agreement and increased cooperation on such issues as Afghanistan, Iran and Libya.

Analysts say there is currently a chill in relations between Washington and Moscow, not least due to Russia joining China in vetoing a U.N. resolution calling for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step aside. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote “a travesty.”

Georgetown University Russia expert Angela Stent says Vladimir Putin has been employing an old, familiar tool during his recent presidential campaign, blaming the United States for a lot of Russia’s problems..

“He has really resorted to a tactic that, of course, has been used since he became president in 2000 - and that is to invoke the United States [as the] enemy, to blame the United States for a lot of Russian problems," said Stent. "And as you saw, in the Duma elections, he then blamed Hillary Clinton, Secretary Clinton for supporting the opposition and for trying to undermine Russian stability.”

Russia expert Robert Legvold cites another example.

“When the new [U.S.] ambassador, Michael McFaul, hosted opposition figures, even though it was a quiet meeting, the authorities knew about it, had camera people there to film it," said Legvold. "And then that led the media, certainly at Putin’s behest, or media knowing what Putin would want, to sharply attack McFaul for doing this kind of thing, interfering and then accusing the opposition party of, through that channel, receiving funding from the United States.”

Mikhail Leontyev, a commentator on Russian state TV, said McFaul was close to U.S. intelligence services. Others have said McFaul has been sent to Moscow to foment an Orange Revolution in Russia.

The accusation that opposition leaders are working at the behest of the U.S. state department to generate an Orange-style revolution is an insult frequently levelled by Kremlin supporters.

"The thing is that McFaul is not a Russia specialist, but a specialist in a very specific kind of democracy promotion," Mr Leontyev said on Channel One's prime-time news programme.

Putin’s latest article, “Russia and the changing world ↑ ,” in Moskovskiye Novosti depicts the U.S. as a destabilizing and dangerous force on the world stage, which needs to be countered. Putin writes: “It seems that NATO members, especially the United States, have developed a peculiar interpretation of security that is different from ours. The Americans have become obsessed with the idea of becoming absolutely invulnerable….[this] is the root of the problem.”

In that article he rails against U.S. and NATO, alluding to the Arab Spring and support for the opposition in Syria, writing that justifications for military intervention in third-party states with the need to defend human rights is “not a noble cause,” but “elementary demagoguery.”

Given this anti-American rhetoric, questions are being raised as to what impact the new Putin presidency will have on U.S.- Russia relations.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul: Introduction video

The date 11 March will forever remain very
significant for both Japan and Lithuania
Japan mourning
2011 tsunami, Lithuania
marking 1990 freedom

A devastating earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 made Japan shake to its core. Thousands of people perished. In addition to massive property damage, the Fukushima nuclear power station sustained critical damage to its reactors which, in turn, caused reactor melt downs and uncontrolled releases of radiation/radioactive materials.

11 March is a date that will forever remain significant in both Japan and Lithuania. It was on this date in 1990 that the members of the Lithuanian Parliament signed the Act of Independence, which was the first major step towards the country's liberation from the Soviet Union after 50 years of living under occupation.

And it was on this date in 2011 that a large earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit northern Japan in a most dramatic, damaging way. One of Japan's nuclear power plants was hit hard, with the result that radiation devastated a large area and many people’s lives.

Only two of Japan's 54 reactors are now running while those shut down for regular inspections undergo special tests to check their ability to withstand similar disasters.

In the midst of all this, Japan and Lithuania have signed an agreement on nuclear cooperation, as the industrial giant Hitachi has been selected to build a brand new nuclear power plant in Lithuania, expected ready by 2020. While the meltdown crisis in Fukushima has raised awareness around the world of the dangers of nuclear power, Lithuania, with its limited natural resources, appears to have little choice but to rely on atomic energy to reduce its heavy reliance on natural gas from Russia.

Japan today – 11 March 2012
Through silence and prayers, people across Japan on Sunday remembered the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the nation one year ago, killing just over 19,000 people and unleashing the world's worst nuclear crisis in a quarter century.

A moment of silence was observed at 2:46 p.m. -- the exact time the magnitude-9.0 quake struck on March 11, 2011.
In the devastated northeastern coastal town of Rikuzentakata, a siren sounded and a Buddhist priest in a purple robe rang a huge bell at a damaged temple overlooking a barren area where houses once stood.

At the same time in Tokyo's National Theater, Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda stood in silence with hundreds of other people dressed in black at a memorial service.

An anti-nuclear protest took place in downtown Tokyo on Sunday amid growing public opposition to atomic power in the wake of the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.

The quake was the strongest recorded in Japan's history, and set off a tsunami that towered more than 20 meters (65 feet)  in some spots along the northeastern coast, destroying tens of thousands of homes and wreaking widespread destruction.

Today, some 325,000 people rendered homeless remain in temporary housing. While much of the debris has been gathered into massive piles, very little rebuilding has begun.

The government says the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, where three reactor cores melted down after the tsunami knocked out their vital cooling systems, is stable and that radiation coming from the plant has subsided significantly. But the plant's chief acknowledged to journalists visiting the complex recently that it remains in a fragile state, and makeshift equipment — some mended with tape — could be seen keeping crucial systems running.

Only two of Japan's 54 reactors are now running while those shut down for regular inspections undergo special tests to check their ability to withstand similar disasters. They could all go offline by the end of April if none are restarted before then.

The Japanese government has pledged to reduce reliance on nuclear power, which supplied about 30 percent of the nation's energy needs before the disaster, but says it needs to restart some nuclear plants to meet Japan's energy needs during the transition period.

Japan's prime minister has acknowledged failures in the government's response to the disaster, being too slow in relaying key information and believing too much in "a myth of safety" about nuclear power.

"We can no longer make the excuse that what was unpredictable and outside our imagination has happened," Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told a group of reporters last weekend. "Crisis management requires us to imagine what may be outside our imagination."

Lithuania today – 11 March 2012
Lithuania was today celebrating the 22nd anniversary of declaring independence from the former Soviet Union, the first of the iron-curtain states so to do after Lithuania had been swallowed up by Moscow in 1940 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Many believe Lithuania’s declaration helped accelerate the fall of the Soviet regime itself.

Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, Chairman of Lithuania’s Supreme Council, was the one who proclaimed Lithuania independent late evening on the 11th of March 1990. 124 members of the Supreme Council had voted for the breakaway. Nobody voted against.

Despite the reformist moves by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, Lithuania’s decision angered the Soviet leadership. In January ’91, the tensions spilled over. Soviet tanks killed 14 people in clashes at the TV tower in Vilnius.

But later that year in the Soviet Union hardliners failed to overthrow Gorbachev, and the movement towards democracy gained momentum.
By early 1993, the Soviet tanks were beating a retreat. The international community had recognised Lithuania’s independence.

11 March has since 1990 been celebrated as Lithuania's second national day, after 16 February which marks the country's declaration of independence of 1918. Unfortunately, the country's authorities have for several years allowed neo-Nazi elements make their mark on this important freedom day.

This year's celebration was different in a positive way, seeing thousands of freedom-loving and open-minded people filling up the country's main street, Gedimino Avenue in Vilnius, to a worthy demonstration of the fact that Lithuania is again a land of wisdom and maturity.